Gardening gurus will tell you that May 15 is the earliest date to plant your tomatoes in St. Lawrence County. That’s generally the date of the last frost.
Tomato plants won’t survive outdoors when the thermometer dips to 35 degrees Fahrenheit, and they won’t thrive if the temperature lingers below 50. So consult your frost date calendars.
One thing is for sure. In 50-80 days, depending on the variety and the weather, tomato lovers will be plundering their vines and reciting the virtues of the red fruit. Notice I said fruit. Technically, they are not vegetables.
My cousin Rosemary mooned about the midsummer delight of the tomato harvest.
“Nothing beats a fresh slice of tomato with a fresh leaf of lettuce and crisp slices of bacon nestled between toast,’’ she said fondly of her favorite summer meal, a BLT sandwich. “You can’t beat it.’’
I couldn’t agree; I could only nod my head. Then she passed the salad bowl that was peppered with cherry tomatoes and watched me grimace.
“Don’t tell me you don’t like tomatoes?’’
“Well, the greens look delicious,’’ was the best I could offer.
Then I had to explain my disdain for tomatoes. I shared details of the ill-fated summer evening, circa 1965, when I wasn’t allowed to leave the dinner table until I had eaten my three slices of tomatoes.
I found them repulsive, but Field Marshal Eileen Holleran, herself a Depression child, had a strict policy about wasting food.
“Don’t bother getting up out of that seat until you finish, young man,’’ she said while finding a few hundred reasons to sort cupboards, wash a dish, etc. so she could enforce her law.
I wasn’t slick enough like my older sister (name withheld to avoid a lawsuit) who learned how to slip peas into her napkin and send them careening down the cold-air register. It was a worthy scam until the day spring cleaning arrived and the register cover was removed. My mother, who worked labor and delivery at Hepburn Hospital, immediately transformed from kindly Florence of the St. Lawrence into Nurse Ratched.
By the time 8 p.m. chimed on the kitchen clock, I had dumped the contents of the sugar bowl over those red nasties and managed to choke them down. That was the last time I ate a fresh, uncooked tomato.
It’s weird because I love tomato sauce, tomato soup and ketchup. I stir diced tomatoes into my go-to dish – shrimp and sausage jambalaya. But I greet freshly-sliced tomatoes as welcomingly as Kathy Bates in a cellophane dress in “Fried Green Tomatoes’’ (1991).
Tomato lovers will extol the virtues of these red devils:
- They are one of the most widely-sought fruits.
- They are loaded with antioxidants, a molecule that protects cell structures in your body.
- Their nutrition value benefits your heart, blood pressure, cholesterol, skin, vision and immune system.
All that is true, but I think the Gershwin Brothers got this right in 1937 with “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.’’
“Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto, let’s call the whole thing off.’’
Smithsonian magazine reported the Aztecs ate tomatoes as early as 700 AD, and the plants spread to Britain and Europe in the 1590s. But by the 1700s, a great number of Europeans feared tomatoes were poisonous. Tomatoes were derided as “poison apples’’ because so many aristocrats became sick after consuming them. In actuality, the rich ate from pewter plates. The acidity of tomatoes on pewter unlocked lead poisoning, yet the tomatoes took the blame.
Tomatoes suffered in North America too. The green tomato worm (hornworms), measuring 3-4 inches long, infiltrated tomato patches around New York State in the 1830s. Gardeners were convinced that touching one of the worms could lead to death. Truth be told, they weren’t poisonous and couldn’t harm anyone.
I think I grew up in the wrong era. If I were an entitled little snot today, I could fling about terms like “poison apples’’ and dangerous hornworms, whine and cry at the dinner table and maybe have my mother placate me with ice cream.
But in the 1960s, she wasn’t going to call the whole thing off.
Morristown native Jim Holleran is a retired teacher and sports editor from Rochester. Reach him at jimholleran29@gmail.com or view past columns under “Reflections of River Rat’’ at https://hollerangetsitwrite.com
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